Chapter II

Joys, amongst other things
Have wings
And watch their opportunities of flight,
Converting in a moment day to night.
C. HERVEY.

The spring lagged wearily on its way to all the characters of this tale.

To Angela it was unspeakably trying and tedious. Her mind was one whose ever vivid hopes must inevitably know disappointment, and though a vivid fancy gives elasticity of disposition, the elasticity wears out with repeated shocks, and a consequent depression succeeds. She came to London excited and expectant, but as the spring advanced a vexed and bitter spirit ensued. Those pictured meetings, that romance of life; where were they or it to be found? London is a large place, and though strange and unexpected meetings do certainly occur; as certainly expected meetings fail to take place. Week after week went by, and Angela watched from her drawing-room and from her carriage window the countless passengers that took their way through the thoroughfares of London; but the one single form on which her eyes longed to rest, was nowhere to be seen. The mornings began in hope and the evenings closed in disappointment, and thus as time passed on hope grew faint, and tedium and disappointment became the prevailing mood of her day.

“I don’t know how you feel, Aunt Jane,” she one day observed to her aunt in a permitted visit to Hampstead, “but life seems to me to become more and more insufferable every day.” Nearly the same words had been said before, but the spirit was then different.

“I am sorry you find it so, my love,” replied her placid aunt. “It does not seem so to me.”

“Life I also think is very curious,” she continued; “you must not think that I mean anything wrong, but I must own I think the affairs of men’s lives are arranged in a very mysterious way. I can understand about the bad being punished, and the thoughtless tried to make them thoughtful; and even I can understand that the good may be tried to make them better; but there are some things that seem to me beyond all understanding. Don’t interrupt me. I want to state a case to you. A person who wishes very much, who wishes above all things to be good, and who meets with a person, so good, so steady, that he could make her so, and he likes her, and would undertake the work, and she likes him, and would do all in her power to please him; and yet they are not allowed to be anything to each other; and meanwhile the person who would be good if she could, having no one to guide her goes on from bad to worse. Now don’t you think that that is a curious and mysterious state of things?”

“I suppose, my love, you mean yourself.”

“Yes,” said her niece, with a half smile. “You have discovered that, have you, dear Aunt Jane?”

“My love, it does seem mysterious; but that word mysterious reminds me of a hymn I once learned. Stay a moment, and I shall remember it.

‘God moves in a mysterious way,’

that’s the first line, but I forget that verse. But stay a moment, now it is coming.... Here are two verses. I think you will like them.

“‘Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy, and will break
In blessings on your head.

‘His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.’”

Miss Price repeated her poem with unwonted energy, elated to have found a lost treasure in her memory.

“The bud has a very bitter taste indeed,” was Angela’s remark, after a few moments of thought. “Do you really think it will come to be a flower at last? If I were sure of that I should not mind waiting.”

“In _some_ way a flower, no doubt, my love.”

“But I want it only in one way. Oh! Aunt Jane,” she exclaimed, and tears were in her eyes, “do you think I shall be disappointed all my life?”

“I trust not, my love. I am sure I trust not. You are very young to think of disappointment. Try to put it out of your head for the present, dearest. Try to be content and patient for the present, and enjoy your many blessings.”

“My many blessings!” and Angela closed up her lips and tossed her head.

“Yes, love, surely many.”

“To be as strong as a horse and as rich as a Jew--do you call those such great blessings. I don’t; that is, at least, not as I have them. I can make no use of riches, and as to my strength, it only makes me more able to be bored. I was made to be a good, honest, hard-working dairy maid, and it is very hard to be a young lady, cooped up in a close carriage, with grand clothes and nothing to do.”

“It seems hard, my love, but no doubt it is for good. Perhaps, dearest, it is to teach you to be patient.”

“And that, alas! it does not do. It makes me _im_patient, and cross, and angry with everybody. I don’t believe even you, Aunt Jane, can guess what my life is. I have _nobody_ to care for, nobody even to like with the commonest kind of liking; it is as if papa advertised for false artificial people, they come to our house so thick and fast. There is Mrs. Vansittart ... she dines there most weeks. Papa is always holding her up as a pattern, and _really_ seems to like to talk to her. She is rouged, and all over jewels, and thinks of nothing but being rich, and how much she gives for her gowns. What _can_ I care what she gives for her gowns?... and then there is her son--oh! such a mean-spirited wretch--thinking he likes me, that is, thinking I think he does, and supposing that I don’t see every crevice of his shallow heart, and know it to be full of nothing but pomps and vanities. The only pleasure I have in life is in teazing him, and making him explain his compliments, till they look so flat and insipid even he blushes over them. I really am sometimes positively ashamed when I think of the company we keep.”

“It is a pity, my love, to speak so. Don’t be angry, dearest, but I think it a bad habit to be scorning so much. They are God’s creatures as well as you.”

“Yes,” said Angela, gravely, “but that is what troubles me most of all. How come there to be such people? But....”

She was arrested in her conversation by a quick short knock at the house door. She paused, and with a startled blush and enquiring eyes looked at her aunt.

“That is Mr. Vavasour’s knock,” observed Miss Price, in a more hurried tone than usual, and with a slight glow of disturbance even on her impassive face.

Angela sprang up, and then stood agitated and uncertain, her colour rapidly changing from red to white.

“Compose yourself, my love,” said her aunt, “he will say nothing your father would disapprove. Sit still and receive him like a common acquaintance. There is nothing to fear.”

“As if that were possible, or as if I had thought of Papa,” was Angela’s soliloquy, while her heart beat tumultuously with she knew not what expectation.

The house door closed abruptly, and expecting Everard’s immediate entrance, Angela hurried to the window to still her agitation and arm herself with dignity. She reached it just in time to see a gentleman rapidly walk away, the very form for which her eyes had sought so long in vain.

She stood looking out without an exclamation, silent and sick at heart, tears of pride, resentment, and mortification stealing down her cheeks.

The drawing-room door opened, and the little maid brought to her expecting mistress, a card on a tray. “The Gentleman hoped you were quite well, ma’am, and he would not come up to-day.”

“I hope you said I was in tolerable health,” she replied tranquilly, though both relieved and disappointed at this termination to her anxiety.

“No, ma’am, I only said ‘Yes, Sir.’ He asked first if you was at home, and I said you was and Miss was here.”

“Very well, Kitty. That was right. That will do,” and the little maid disappeared.

“I feel a little sorry, my love,” observed Miss Price, after waiting some minutes, in the hope that Angela would speak, “but after all, it is best as it is, and I am sure he has tried to do what is right,” and she resumed the work she had laid aside, and began to pick out a false stitch with care and attention.

Her niece made no answer to this observation; and when she resumed her seat near her, it was with a countenance entirely different to any Miss Price had ever seen before. Her air was haughty, her head drawn up, and a kind of proud composure seemed to have driven all the glow of youth from her face.

“What is the matter, my love?” asked Miss Price, almost as much astonished at this change in her appearance, as she had been on the memorable day of her disguise. “You are not offended?”

“Offended!” she said, coldly, “Oh, no, there is no cause for offence. Let us speak of something else. Let me look at your work, Aunt Jane.” And no efforts of her timid aunt could induce her to renew the subject of Everard’s call.

She did not think she had deserved such treatment at his hands, and a feeling of bitter resentment, interspersed in a degree, and at moments, with admiration of what she called his austere views of duty, took possession of her mind, and for the time at least swept softer feelings away.

Strangely different meanwhile to the austerity she imagined were Everard’s feelings. The visit to Miss Price had been the impulse of a moment. At the close of a weary afternoon he had felt a longing to hear of Angela that could not be resisted, and he had started on his visit of enquiry without taking time for thought. A like yielding to impulse had been the retreat. Uncertainty regarding Angela’s reception, distrust of himself, a cloudiness in his vision regarding what his parting words had been, how strong, how binding; doubts in short as to what he might, should, would, could, or ought to do, had made him instinctively draw back; and yet he had scarcely closed the door of hope before he regretted with passionate regret the step he had taken, and felt that he had thrown away the one opportunity of soothing and re-assuring his mind, which had been offered him.

This disordered state of feeling was not like the old Everard. His mother had said that love with him would be a serious thing, and it was so. His mind had his father’s tenacious and concentrated grasp of things, but his character was by no means equal to his father’s in inflexibility. And yet it was not so much his attachment, as its unsatisfactory termination which had disordered him. However sweet it be at the moment to yield to the promptings of temper, be it to express anger, revenge, the bitterness of a wounded spirit, or the mortification that sinks the soul; the sweetness is confined to the moment of expression; a sting is left behind which poisons many an hour which would otherwise have been peaceful. This sting it was which was destroying Everard’s peace. He knew he had cut himself off from hearing Angela’s sentiments; he thought he had lowered himself in her eyes; he knew he had spoken in passion a renunciation of all claims, and how far those passionate words bound him he was unable to decide. Restless uncertainty tormented him day and night.

And there was another torment. He had gone back with redoubled vigour to his work, but the one single aim which had made his brain calm, and his spirit strong, was gone. His father’s image was choked and smothered under a host of bewildering dreams, which set his head on fire. The sting of Mr. Gresham’s words was smarting yet, and often and often, when he suffered his eyes to be following his dull page, his fancy was vaguely pursuing distant ambitious visions, as idle as the vain fancies of a child. He would awake with a start of scorn and repentance, but the idle dreams recurred again.

The trials of Angela and Everard were not trivial; nothing can be trivial which affects either the daily happiness or the future well-being of any human creature; but as compared with the deadly anxiety and sorrow that reigned at Audley Court they were trivial; for that anxiety involved not a temporal only, but an eternal destiny, and that sorrow was for one, round whom the intense affections of many years were twined. The Bible speaks of the mourning for a first-born son, as of one incomparable in its bitterness; such a sorrow and mourning was in Robert’s home, consuming the life within.

Towards the end of January he had written a few lines, expressing his regret for having failed to perform his promise at Christmas. The letter was without date, but the post mark was Paris. There was no want of affection in the letter, nor of regret for having failed, yet there was constraint in its tone, and the words were hurried and few. Of the future no mention was made; there was no expression of hope, no promise, no looking forward to a return; neither was there mention of the present, of where he was, or what were his occupations or his pleasures. It was a letter so vague as to cause anxiety, so strange as to cause fear. The terrors that for a month had been growing up, received a seal and sanction, and deepened in intensity. There was no more hearkening for the sound of wheels, or watching for the sight of his face; a cold, dark, vague dread sat upon each heart, a dread cold and silent as death.

For none spoke their fears. Life went on more silently perhaps, but the same as usual. There was less patience on Mr. Vavasour’s brow, but no words of impatience on his tongue; less cheerfulness in Mrs. Vavasour’s tone, but no acknowledgment that she had need to be sad; and Hope, more full of pity, more full of love, more full of ceaseless prayers, went about her daily tasks and said nothing.